the "the brain is a radio" analogy

[asydhouse]

<snip>

You say that everything you experience is content. Yet you have a sense of someone experiencing... no? Is that content?

Yes.

 

[Nick227]

Yes.

Me too!

And is there awareness of even that?

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[Nick227]

I realize the danger of bringing this up here in this forum due to the perception of dreadful 'navel gazing'.

I really wouldn't worry about this if I were you, Larry. A lot of highly regarded scientists and academics frequently use prosaic language to try and describe consciousness. I saw Mike Graziano call it ethereal not long ago!

In my experience it's only the more dim-witted of the skeptics that ridicules the use of this language. They don't understand the science well so they pass judgements based on how things appear on the surface.

It's another evolution-derived behaviour, useful when you want to be able to assess something but don't understand the area well enough.

You have to understand at depth to tell when someone is spouting nonsense or actually really aware.

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[MuDPhuD]

I found it a good book. I'm not convinced, not least because for me Graziano doesn't really devote enough time to his actual theory, just provides an excellent background to the area.







Electrically stimulating the angular gyrus or tpj may actually cause the whole locus of perception to shift. The brain may just be assembling neural representations to suggest one constant locus.



Anyway, I'd be happy to believe that this sense of communion or presence was entirely brain derived if we explained how the brain creates consciousness. I wouldn't have a problem with it. We're not there yet.









I don't know what consciousness would be separate from its content. Something yogis talk about maybe. Nevertheless it seems that the two could be separated, that's how it feels to me.



You say that everything you experience is content. Yet you have a sense of someone experiencing... no? Is that content?

That's pretty wishy-washy of you. "The two could be separated, that's how it FEELS to me", FEELING is content. Your brain does the feeling. It seems you are unable to describe what the non-content portion of consciousness might be, as I expected. That's because everything "you" are "aware" of is mediated by the neural circuits in your brain.

I put it to you that the reason you are not able to describe a non-content aspect of consciousness is because there isn't any such thing.

Does the sense of "me experiencing" qualify as a content of consciousness? Of course it does. You described it yourself earlier as the "sense of self " and I linked you to a study of distortions of the sense of self produce by frontal lobe damage. Yes it's part of what the brain does.

If all the evidence we have indicates that any given aspect of consciousness you can identify is subserved by some particular neural circuit, then why would you go looking anywhere other than the brain to understand consciousness?

 

[Nick227]

I put it to you that the reason you are not able to describe a non-content aspect of consciousness is because there isn't any such thing.

It's possible, as I said. But we cannot describe all our experience totally to our satisfaction, that's how it is, unless one's a robot programmed only with language.

Does the sense of "me experiencing" qualify as a content of consciousness? Of course it does.

And is there a sense of being aware of even that?

If all the evidence we have indicates that any given aspect of consciousness you can identify is subserved by some particular neural circuit, then why would you go looking anywhere other than the brain to understand consciousness?

Because we don't know how the brain does it. Especially given the fact you mention, it actually makes it worse for materialism. If we can track all this, but still don't know how. Why not?

You can go eliminativist. You can say we need to change the laws of physics. Or you can await a revelation. These are the 3 current options for materialists.

If I were you I'd start checking out Don Hoffman and idealism a bit more closely. Time's getting on and you could be backing a loser!

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[Nick227]

Something to bear in mind happened at last year's Tucson consciousness conference. Dave Chalmers carried out a straw poll to see how many attendees still believed in the HPC. About 3/4 did.

That's a big majority of interested parties who still believe we're a long way away.

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[MuDPhuD]

Now you're doing the old False Dichotomy routine, MuDPhuD. Even the most rabid Idealist does not suggest abandoning all we have. There are middle paths.

You write "It is not a mystery at all that the brain produces consciousness, the mystery is "how" it does this." I put it to you that few people from a hard science background would be too willing to go along with such a statement.

Because in this situation "how" is the very guts of it. We have P3 waves slow-moving 1/3rd of a second behind stimulus on EEG, we have subliminal processing amplified into a snowballing wave invading the parietal lobes, propagating left, right and centre. We know neural signatures of consciousness. We know threshold amplitudes. But we still don't know how.

How becomes even more important when we already have so much knowledge. How starts to weaken the materialist position because we've tracked so much but we still can't work it out. In this situation, how starts to diminish the value of the position that the brain must be creating consciousness.

You are impatient with the pace of progress in this area, and thus you conclude that science must be inadequate to the task.

You should realize that there is essentially $0 available for research into consciousness. Very few neuroscientists are engaged on this problem, because almost all research in neuroscience is funded from the public domain, specifically by the NIH and NSF in USA. These funding sources devote very little resources to the problem of consciousness. Almost all funding, and consequently almost all research, is devoted to medicine and disease.

In 1906 the Nobel prize in medicine was award to the men who described the brain as being composed of neurons. brain.http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1906/

In 1963 the Nobel in medicine went to three men who came to understand the nature of the action potential. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1963/

In 1970 it was awarded to the discoverers of the mechanism of neurotransmitter storage and release at the synapse.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1970/

The first neuroscientist I ever heard mention the study of consciousness was Francis Crick (actually not a neuroscientist) in around 1990.
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/C/F/D/_/scbcfd.pdf
He was considered an ecccentric by most neuroscientists at the time.

It took science 100 years to go from Ramon y Cajal's neuron doctrine (the idea that neurons are individual cells), to the very beginning of neuroscience investigating the nature of consciousness, and you believe that failure to finish the job in a few decades puts "materialism" in a bad light?

All the evidence over 150 years indicates that the brain is the organ of consciousness. You yourself are unable to describe any aspect of consciousness which is not a brain function. There is no evidence whatsoever for any other line of investigation regarding the nature of consciousness. I asked several times for someone to please point me to any evidence or knowledge which supports the brain as radio hypothesis and there is no reply, I believe because there is no evidence.

Unless you would like to provide some?

 

[MuDPhuD]

It's possible, as I said. But we cannot describe all our experience totally to our satisfaction, that's how it is, unless one's a robot programmed only with language.

And is there a sense of being aware of even that?

Sensing and awareness are brain functions.
You believe there is a part of your experience which you are aware of, but which you cannot describe? Can you at least try to describe it?

Because we don't know how the brain does it. Especially given the fact you mention, it actually makes it worse for materialism. If we can track all this, but still don't know how. Why not?

Because science advances in tiny little baby steps.
There is no other valid way to proceed.

You can go eliminativist. You can say we need to change the laws of physics. Or you can await a revelation. These are the 3 current options for materialists.

If I were you I'd start checking out Don Hoffman and idealism a bit more closely. Time's getting on and you could be backing a loser!

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Instead of "await a revelation" how about "roll up your shirtsleaves and get to work"? That's how science moves along, step by step.

I'll take a look at idealism when you can tell me about the non-content portion of consciousness that exists separate from the brain.

 

[LarryS]

I asked several times for someone to please point me to any evidence or knowledge which supports the brain as radio hypothesis and there is no reply, I believe because there is no evidence.

Unless you would like to provide some?

bit of a strawman as no one here expressed a belief that the brain is a radio - even Chopra didn't . . . again this quote from the WooMaster himself:

When the brain lights up, its activity is like a radio lighting up when music is played. It is an obvious fallacy to say that the radio composed the music. What is being viewed is only a physical correlation, not a cause.

hilite mine. and I can't belief I'm coming to Chopra's defense . . .

 

[MuDPhuD]

Something to bear in mind happened at last year's Tucson consciousness conference. Dave Chalmers carried out a straw poll to see how many attendees still believed in the HPC. About 3/4 did.

That's a big majority of interested parties who still believe we're a long way away.

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What about the other 25%?

 

[MuDPhuD]

I'm capable of making the distinction between being conscious and the contents of consciousness. Being conscious is the simple yet often overlooked noting that I am conscious and that I exist as awareness by the simple act of 'being aware that I am aware' - there is no object or content of awareness needed during this observation. I realize the danger of bringing this up here in this forum due to the perception of dreadful 'navel gazing'.
It does have a practical value . . . I notice that as I fall asleep my thoughts and perceptions become random and farther apart - with gaps of pure awareness - and I will simulate this to aid in falling asleep.
I am not suggesting this 'pure awareness' does not have neural correlates - or is not contingent on a brain. I am only suggesting that the distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness can be made subjectively, and neurological support of pure awareness should be discoverable.

In this state of "pure awareness" you have a "sense of being", you are aware of yourself. You are the content of your consciousness, and as you suggest this is the result of brain activity. It is not indicative of a consciousness outside of the brain.
Or do you believe that it is?

 

[asydhouse]

In this state of "pure awareness" you have a "sense of being", you are aware of yourself. You are the content of your consciousness, and as you suggest this is the result of brain activity. It is not indicative of a consciousness outside of the brain.
Or do you believe that it is?

Exactly.

What we call "consciousness" is literally the act of being aware of being. It's like looking in a mirror. But it's not seeing with eyes, it is thinking about your thoughts.

Thoughts can be nonverbal, since "thoughts" are activity of the brain. Seeing with your eyes is a thought process! Likewise, feeling relaxed and "happily" well, sitting in warming winter sunshine and soaking up that contented feeling, i.e. simply being in the moment, is a thought process going on in brain activity, even when you are not actively "thinking" about anything!

Humans have a game we play by identifying aspects of our behaviour that we can package as an individual "personality" in each of us, and we each give ourselves a name (or accept the one given by our parents) and continue to "identify" ourselves as the person we think we are, each unique.

But animals are also conscious. They have the same (or necessarily similar) summation of their brain's subroutines which gives them the same sense of being present, and which enables them to be aware of and "pay attention" to human interaction with them (for example), but they don't verbalise, nor "think about" themselves in the same highly convoluted self-referential way that humans have developed, playing our game of questioning ourselves about ourselves.

It's all pretty simple and obvious, if you stop thinking of humans as somehow distinct from the natural process of the universe (chemistry and physics). All you have to do is become humble enough to admit that you are not the centre of the universe and there is no need nor place for a "soul" (or analogues of "soul", as in Chopra's naive pseudo-profound "universal consciousness").

 

[annnnoid]

Exactly.

What we call "consciousness" is literally the act of being aware of being. It's like looking in a mirror. But it's not seeing with eyes, it is thinking about your thoughts.

Thoughts can be nonverbal, since "thoughts" are activity of the brain. Seeing with your eyes is a thought process! Likewise, feeling relaxed and "happily" well, sitting in warming winter sunshine and soaking up that contented feeling, i.e. simply being in the moment, is a thought process going on in brain activity, even when you are not actively "thinking" about anything!

Humans have a game we play by identifying aspects of our behaviour that we can package as an individual "personality" in each of us, and we each give ourselves a name (or accept the one given by our parents) and continue to "identify" ourselves as the person we think we are, each unique.

But animals are also conscious. They have the same (or necessarily similar) summation of their brain's subroutines which gives them the same sense of being present, and which enables them to be aware of and "pay attention" to human interaction with them (for example), but they don't verbalise, nor "think about" themselves in the same highly convoluted self-referential way that humans have developed, playing our game of questioning ourselves about ourselves.

It's all pretty simple and obvious, if you stop thinking of humans as somehow distinct from the natural process of the universe (chemistry and physics). All you have to do is become humble enough to admit that you are not the centre of the universe and there is no need nor place for a "soul" (or analogues of "soul", as in Chopra's naive pseudo-profound "universal consciousness").

…yeah, it’s all simple and obvious as long as you completely ignore how incredibly complex and incomprehensible it is…and as long as you ignore the simple and obvious fact that there’s absolutely nothing remotely simple or obvious about any of our so-called simple and obvious conclusions about any of it….except how much they ignore in trying to come to the conclusion that it’s all simple and obvious.

I’d commend you for making an attempt at summarizing this whole thing…but perhaps you ought to take a moment and count the number of unsupported (and unsupportable) assertions you’ve made in those few paragraphs. Once you take them out you’re left with the exact same amount of nothing that the rest of us are left with.

All your ‘simple and obvious’ conclusion (“You are the content of your consciousness”) does is beg the questions: What does that even mean? What is a ‘you’? How is one created? What is this thing called ‘consciousness’? What are these 'contents of consciousness'? Are my contents the same as your contents? How is it possible to empirically adjudicate any of this? One thing that is indisputably certain…is that the ability to answer those question is not necessarily a function of scientific literacy…and the answers to those questions will vary according a whole range of variables.

Please continue if you would, to elaborate the knowledge you are aware of which is in support of the "brain as a radio" hypothesis.

I presume the "holes" you speak of, of which the "neural argument" is full, is the fact that no one can describe exactly HOW the brain produces the "mind", as this is your constant mantra. (Since no one will help me define it better I will stick to the definition of "consciousness" or "mind" which I provided, no matter how unsatisfactory it may be.). Never mind that all the parts of the mind correspond exactly in their smallest detail to neural mechanisms.

I’m repeating this because you didn’t answer the question.

You made a very substantial claim here (highlighted). I want to know where and how science has explicitly empirically differentiated and categorized all of these ‘parts of the mind’ ‘in their smallest detail.’

…because this is a development that I’ve never heard of.

What I have heard of is quite effectively described by this quote on human affairs from Noam Chomsky: “…scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so.”

 

[Belz...]

…yeah, it’s all simple and obvious as long as you completely ignore how incredibly complex and incomprehensible it is…

You're like Robo-Rubio: you keep repeating the same talking point over and over.

We're aware that you think all of this is incomprehensible, annnnoid.

 

[MuDPhuD]

Do let me know when you come anywhere close to an argument that can actually establish that Chopra is wrong (that doesn’t mean he’s right of course, that just means you don’t know what is). The physics argument turned out to be garbage, the neural argument is full of holes, and the cognitive argument doesn’t even get to the starting line.

Basically…there’s lots and lots of ‘knowledge’ in his argument, you just don’t happen to like any of it.



No…they can’t. I’m not talking about theories. I’m talking about actual answers. When an automaker has to design an engine (just one of the ridiculously stupid brain analogies that gets frequently dumped on these threads) they don’t have ‘theories’. They know exactly what every component is – from the smallest to the largest, the exact size and shape, precisely where every part is supposed to go and why, the specific materials involved (right down to their atomic structure), how everything works individually and collectively.

Everything is understood. No theories required. No questions about being ‘proven right’…cause they already know that they are.

In comparison, find me anyone who can even begin to explain why even one single reasonably differentiated area of the brain has the bio-chemical architecture that it has (why it is that way, let alone how it ever came to be that way in the first place [no post-hoc rationalizations]). Why it is situated where it is in the brain and how it interacts with other areas around it. How it’s bio-chemical structure explicitly generates whatever specific cognitive activity is associated with it (to the degree that the cognitive activity can even be empirically defined and explicitly differentiated…which it usually cannot be). Why that specific bio-chemical activity is associated with that specific cognitive activity …and not some other cognitive activity…or no cognitive activity.

Like I said…it’s dead easy to blast huge holes in just about any of these arguments.




It’s not in any thread (and I can 100% guarantee that no links will be produced to demonstrate that I’m wrong)….for the very simple reason that no such answer exists. All that exists are a bunch of skeptics wishing there was such an answer.




I’m going to assume this is meant as a joke.

Again, please elaborate on what this "lots and lots" of knoweldge is. I've been waiting quite some time for your answer.

 

[MuDPhuD]

…yeah, it’s all simple and obvious as long as you completely ignore how incredibly complex and incomprehensible it is…and as long as you ignore the simple and obvious fact that there’s absolutely nothing remotely simple or obvious about any of our so-called simple and obvious conclusions about any of it….except how much they ignore in trying to come to the conclusion that it’s all simple and obvious.

I’d commend you for making an attempt at summarizing this whole thing…but perhaps you ought to take a moment and count the number of unsupported (and unsupportable) assertions you’ve made in those few paragraphs. Once you take them out you’re left with the exact same amount of nothing that the rest of us are left with.

All your ‘simple and obvious’ conclusion (“You are the content of your consciousness”) does is beg the questions: What does that even mean? What is a ‘you’? How is one created? What is this thing called ‘consciousness’? What are these 'contents of consciousness'? Are my contents the same as your contents? How is it possible to empirically adjudicate any of this? One thing that is indisputably certain…is that the ability to answer those question is not necessarily a function of scientific literacy…and the answers to those questions will vary according a whole range of variables.




I’m repeating this because you didn’t answer the question.

You made a very substantial claim here (highlighted). I want to know where and how science has explicitly empirically differentiated and categorized all of these ‘parts of the mind’ ‘in their smallest detail.’

…because this is a development that I’ve never heard of.

What I have heard of is quite effectively described by this quote on human affairs from Noam Chomsky: “…scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so.”

I did not mean to say that "science has empirically differentiated and categorized..." You have misunderstood me. Let me clarify my meaning for you.
All the content of consciousness of which I am aware corresponds with the function of neural systems. Oddly specific aspects of conscious content correspond to peculiar aspects of brain structure and function.
For example: The type of color vision we have depends on the particular opsin pigments present in the retina. The fact that night vision is very poor in the center of the visual field, but much better in the periphery, and lacks color. The particular frequencies we are able to hear. The fact that recognizing faces (just faces, no other object) can be disturbed by small cortical lesions in particular locations, etc.

If YOU are aware of some content or element of consciousness which is not related to the function of any neural system in your brain, then I am all ears (eyes?).
Please do elaborate.
Perhaps you can assist Nick with his description of the non-content aspect of consciousness which is not relate-able to the activity of any neural system?
I await your thoughtful considered response.

 

[MuDPhuD]

<--Snip-> What is this thing called ‘consciousness’? What are these 'contents of consciousness'? Are my contents the same as your contents? How is it possible to empirically adjudicate any of this? One thing that is indisputably certain…is that the ability to answer those question is not necessarily a function of scientific literacy…and the answers to those questions will vary according a whole range of variables.

I agree that we must define what this word "consciousness" is being used to refer to. I have attempted to do that earlier in thread for myself. Perhaps you could give me some idea how you are using the word?

The "contents" of consciousness, in my usage, are your sensorium, memories, feelings, and thoughts.

Are your contents the same as mine? If you would attempt to describe your own, we can compare. Other posters seem to agree that we all do have similar experiences. You do not need to be scientifically literate to describe you experience of being, I agree. Give it a try.
What variables do you speak of?

 

[Myriad]

I've considered the following question, which might be relevant here: what is our best artificial model of conscious experience?

The answer, pretty clearly, is not a chess-playing program or a data mining algorithm, or a robotic factory or a mathematical formula or a pattern of information flow. It's a narrative. Such as, a novel with an individual point of view. Arthur Conan Doyle's Watson is a better representation of conscious experience than IBM's.

MuDPhuD's appraisal of the content of consciousness is "your sensorium, memories, feelings, and thoughts." I agree that's a pretty good assessment. That's also the content of narrative.

So what I see in this thread is, mostly, people ascribing (or denying) consciousness to the
brain processes that generate personal experiential narrative, or to statistical qualities of those processes, rather than to the generated narrative itself. That's better than looking for it in the matter that neurons are made of, or in some specific gland somewhere in the brain, but it's still too low a level.

It seems like an ongoing argument between those who are looking for the protagonist among the molecules of the printer's ink, those who think it arises from the rules of grammar or trends in word usage distribution instead, and those for whom (having understandably failed to find it to their satisfaction in any of those substrate levels) can only regard it as an utter mystery. Why not look for the real nature of consciousness right where we experience it, as a role in an ongoing constructed narrative?

(To avoid distraction, note that I'm not saying that characters in novels have or generate conscious awareness, any more than a model of a duck lays eggs. Looking further into the actual nature of characters in an author's brain might be interesting; authors describe well-developed characters as having a volition of their own, regarding what decisions they make in a story, so often that it's a cliché. But I don't think any deep revelations lie in that direction.)

Obviously, our consciousness as we experience it must arise from sources that are not our consciousness (even if those sources were mysterious such as some "universal" consciousness), or else what we experience would be those sources instead. So observing that most brain processes, including the ones that give rise to consciousness, are not themselves conscious awareness or any specific part thereof, is no impediment to the brain origin hypothesis. It's no more surprising than your not perceiving the workings of the event handling queue in the program when you play a computer game.

That doesn't rule out the radio hypothesis either, of course. The thing about that hypothesis is not that it's a dark horse hypothesis that's heroically managed to stay un-falsified. It is, instead, a tiny remnant of what used to be the dominant and only type of hypothesis: that the brain (or some other organ) is a vessel for an independently existing spiritual entity.

Imagine that you're an alien explorer. You find, on a deserted planet let's say, an object with various knobs and dials, from which sounds emanate. You decode the sound and find that it is a voice giving reports of events in a civilization, such as the rise and fall of the "stock market" and the political careers of various leaders. You turn some knobs and the device plays music instead, or presents multiple voices conversing about various topics including the fortunes of various competing sports teams, interspersed with commercials.

Examining the inside, you see various components, none of which look very complex but are unfamiliar to you. You can tell there's power flowing in there, but you don't know how any of it works. There are no other emanations from it besides the sounds that you can detect, and no incoming patterns of signals that you can detect that correlate with the output in any way.

You conclude that it is a radio, or at least a radio-like receiver even if you cannot otherwise detect the signal it's supposedly receiving. That's a reasonable conclusion, very similar to what humans concluded about the brain up until a very few centuries ago.

But then, further research starts presenting challenges to that view. It's discovered, for example, that manipulating the components inside the device can cause the stock market price being reported in the news reports to go up and down. Similar manipulations can also change the instrumentation, tune, or lyrics of the songs, or determine which sports teams have winning seasons, or change the prevalence of commercials. And microscopic examination of the components gradually reveals them to be far more complex than they appeared. They actually have vast information storage and information processing capabilities.

There is no choice but to revise your hypothesis, and to conclude that as hard as it is to believe, everything you're hearing from the "radio" is actually coming from processes going on inside the device. There are a few who hold out hope that the explanation is actually that the device is a transmitter as well as a receiver, so that when the components are manipulated, the civilization or entity in communication with the device notices the change and responds accordingly. But the failure to detect any such transmissions in either direction, or any such entity in the vicinity, and the overall predictive success of physical models suggesting that even an unknown type of influence could not propagate faster than the speed of light, loom larger and larger against that notion.

That's where we stand with mind, consciousness, and the brain. The "vessel" hypothesis was once the only respectable possibility, and has steadily lost standing to the point where the only thing, absolutely the only thing, it has going for it is that when allowing arbitrary additions of unknown un-evidenced phenomena and entities, it cannot be entirely disproven.

 

[LarryS]

Myriad - I appreciate your thoughts and attempt at a summary of this thread. I must confess that the analogy of 'brain like or as a radio' doesn't click with me - I don't get it. For me, it's easier to think of the question as: Is consciousness local or non-local? Now, I don't know what non-local means, but I do know what local means - that consciousness is the result of, or emerges from brain activity, and brain activity alone can explain consciousness.
Now if consciousness is local, then every experience and everything re being a human occurs inside our skull - we are each an individual parcel of consciousness sharing a common sterile world, and living in total alienation.
This description does not even describe how I experience my morning cup of coffee, much less seeing my children being born, or watching the moon rise over the ocean. . . . unless we add a whole bunch of chemicals to the brain for the sole purpose of tricking the mind into feeling connected to other people and the world.
Maybe there is a fitness advantage to being tricked into feeling connected when in fact we are truly isolated from each other - but I don't relish the thought of being kept stupid drunk just to pass genes along.
So for this reason - I side with the poets and all their hand waving and special pleading for non-locality - even if that means I don't know what that means.

 

[Navigator]

Obviously, our consciousness as we experience it must arise from sources that are not our consciousness (even if those sources were mysterious such as some "universal" consciousness), or else what we experience would be those sources instead. So observing that most brain processes, including the ones that give rise to consciousness, are not themselves conscious awareness or any specific part thereof, is no impediment to the brain origin hypothesis. It's no more surprising than your not perceiving the workings of the event handling queue in the program when you play a computer game.

For clarity, there are a couple of things in the above statement which are not accurate.

You say 'obviously'...

Obviously, our consciousness as we experience it must arise from sources that are not our consciousness (even if those sources were mysterious such as some "universal" consciousness), or else what we experience would be those sources instead.

First off 'we' don't have consciousness, we are consciousness. This means the experience we are having as consciousness is not what we are.

If we come from some mysterious universal consciousness, there is no reason to assume that we would obviously experience that source instead.

For example, if we take the analogy of being within some type of simulation generator whereby full immersion into the 'story' of that simulation means that all prior knowledge of the former existence is forgotten - the act of fully immersing into the story itself is what produces this amnesia - then this would explain why we don't experience those sources as part of our self identification as well.

After all, if you (as that consciousness before immersing into the simulation) want the experience to be as genuine as possible you won't want any memory of being in any prior experience.


Then you continue to say;

So observing that most brain processes, including the ones that give rise to consciousness, are not themselves conscious awareness or any specific part thereof, is no impediment to the brain origin hypothesis. It's no more surprising than your not perceiving the workings of the event handling queue in the program when you play a computer game.

You came to that conclusion because you set up the conditions to favor that conclusion...you started with the word 'obviously' and then proceeded to assume the variables involved - that the source of our consciousness is not the same as our consciousness otherwise we would be experiencing that rather than this...

But what is different is not the consciousness but the experience that the consciousness is having.

The assumption that all consciousness is different just because all experiences are different is not one which should be made.

Within the experience we each are able to narrate our story within the limitations of the environment we are experiencing the story in. Much of it is narrated for us through what we experience as the external - including our brains/bodies, which in turn gives us the illusion the simulation is designed to give us through being fully immersed within it- that we are the product of the external thing...the product of the simulation we are experiencing as being 'real'.

Yet, even being fully immersed within it, we are unable to do anything about the possibilities we conceive, perceive, etc which allow for such concepts as gods, afterlife, simulations, prior existences, alternate universes etc...to formulate, not because the brain would rather be some place else but because the nature of consciousness is such that it 'knows' something isn't quiet 'right' about the whole deal...something isn't 'real' about it.

Consciousness shouldn't really be here - it doesn't seem logical...they may not even be feelings one is consciously aware of but are there under the surface anyway having an effect and can come to the surface when triggered by such things as the counter-productivity of human interaction with said environment...'something' is 'amiss'...